{"id":16851,"date":"2021-07-20T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=16851"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:14:18","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:14:18","slug":"i-hate-everybody-an-ode-to-the-racially-charged-action-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/i-hate-everybody-an-ode-to-the-racially-charged-action-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"I Hate Everybody: An Ode to the Racially-Charged Action Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Upon a recent re-watch\u2014my first in over ten years\u2014of one of my personal favorite action films, 1997\u2019s Con Air<\/em>, I was surprised to discover how openly racially-provocative the movie was. This is not a case of shock over a 24-year-old movie (especially one as ridiculously macho as Con Air<\/em>) not conforming to modern-day political sensitivities; indeed, I well-remembered several of aspects of the film which would be considered legitimately problematic today, including a several uses of racial invective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the re-watch revealed more than just the occasional slur; from beginning to end, the movie betrays its proudly reactionary point of view by having one of the lead villains be a Black nationalist and making a (clearly sincere) joke about Denzel Washington playing him in a movie. As with many films of its stripe, the movie\u2019s politics are wildly confused\u2014for all that it conveys a reactionary and even racist perspective, and for as much as it engages in militaristic fetishism, it also consistently displays a distrust and even disdain for authoritarian white male power figures and indeed the larger legal system. (It also makes the aforementioned Black separatist character a charismatic, even loveable scoundrel, although much of that is the result of Ving Rhames absolutely owning the role).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More interesting to me than the individual politics of Con Air<\/em> though is how representative it is of a particular type of movie that is rarely seen anymore: the racially-charged action film. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

American action movies, to whatever subgenre they belong, always contained a noticeable racial element. Look no further than the Western, which often centered around the history of violence between white settlers and Indigenous Americans. Early  examples served to reinforce the mythology surrounding Manifest Destiny, casting the Native peoples as faceless, murderous hordes, but as the genre took on more psychological depth in the \u201840s and \u201850s, there was a greater willingness on behalf of filmmakers to at least wrestle with (if not necessarily to acknowledge the full extent of) the brutality of white genocidal colonialism: see John Ford and John Wayne\u2019s classic The Searchers<\/em> for the clearest example of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the studio system collapsed in the late \u201860s, the generation known as New Hollywood doubled down on this sense of moral greyness. The films of the following decade were more openly racially charged than ever before, with two of the biggest cop thrillers of the time<\/a>\u2014The French Connection<\/em> and Dirty Harry<\/em>\u2014featuring protagonists who regularly and casually engage in racial bigotry (so too does the villain in the latter). Though many a viewer mistook their depiction for endorsement, you couldn\u2019t accuse the films of ignoring the volatile realities of their political climate.     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This same period also saw the creation of films for the \u2018urban market\u2019, which has become (not entirely fairly) synonymous with the Blaxploitation genre. These films, the majority of which belonged to the action\/crime genre, gave their audiences the prurient catharsis so long denied them by Hollywood by having black heroes openly denigrate the white social order and violently overcome the white power establishment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blaxploitation petered out relatively quickly, but the drive for action filmmakers to engage with racially charged material didn\u2019t dissipate. Rather, it found a foothold in the flashier, more expensive and bombastic action films of the \u201880s, which exploded onto the market following the industry-changing success of Jaws<\/em> and Star Wars<\/em>. Although the mixed-race buddy action movie as we know it took root in the \u201870s (the groundwork was laid by 1968\u2019s Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night<\/em>), with the likes of Freebie and the Bean<\/em> (as wildly problematic as it is endlessly enjoyable) and Hickey and Boggs<\/em>, it was in the next decade where it would really take off, starting with 1982\u2019s 48 Hrs<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Directed by Walter Hill (who wrote the script for Hickey and Boggs<\/em>), the film pairs Nick Nolte\u2019s gruff, casually racist and abusive police detective with Eddie Murphy\u2019s fast-talking, wily ex-con for a gritty but rollicking demolition derby through the streets of San Francisco. Along with launching Murphy into the stratosphere, it also kicked off a run of black-and-white buddy action movies, including the even more successful Lethal Weapon<\/em> franchise, in which (although the racial divide is not as central to the main duo\u2019s relationship as in previous examples) race itself does come into play \u2014 particularly in the second and third entries, which tackle South African apartheid and inner-city gang violence, respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Examples of mixed-race buddy cop movies would continue through the years, with the two highest grossing examples\u2014the Men in Black<\/em> and Rush Hour<\/em> franchises\u2014coming out in the late \u201890s (although it should be noted that Rush Hour 2<\/em>, the number two most financially successful buddy cop movie, was released in 2001). The first of those, being a broader, more family-friendly property, doesn\u2019t really address race, but the Rush Hour<\/em> movies\u2014which star Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan\u2014found their main appeal in (relatively speaking) edgy ethnic comedy between its two minority protagonists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Granted, the Rush Hour<\/em> movies don\u2019t actually have anything to say\u2014nor do they try\u2014about race relations, but the other examples from the \u201890s very much do. The first half of the decade saw a renaissance of the neo-noir thriller, which included a renewed interest in urban thrillers. Several of these, including Abel Ferrara\u2019s King of New York<\/em>, Mario Van Peebles\u2019 New Jack City<\/em>, and especially Bill Duke\u2019s highly political Deep Cover<\/em>, are as much action movies as they are crime thrillers and social dramas, and  the racial and economic realities of the time play large parts in all of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Around this same time, less outwardly political action-thrillers started layering in more and more racial elements, including three films by the man perhaps most synonymous with the \u201890s action blockbuster: Tony Scott<\/a>. His underrated black-white buddy action movie of 1991, The Last Boy Scout<\/em>, follows the template set by previous examples, milking the cultural clash between its mixed-race heroes (Damon Wayans and Bruce Willis) for all its worth, while his Naval drama of four years later, Crimson Tide<\/em><\/a>, layers the unspoken\u2014but not unacknowledged\u2014racial animus between its leads (Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington) underneath the main plot. But it\u2019s Scott\u2019s adaptation of Quentin Tarantino\u2019s True Romance<\/em>, which came out between the two, that contains the most startling example, by way of an infamous monologue about the racial origins of Sicilians as delivered by Dennis Hopper. Much has been written<\/a> about Tarantino\u2019s liberal use of racial invective throughout his filmography\u2014far too much to go into here\u2014but whatever opinion one holds, I think we can all agree that he\u2019s probably the only major Hollywood filmmaker who would still be willing to include such a scene in a movie today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The year 1992 saw the biggest upheaval in American race relations since the height of the Civil Rights movement following on the release of video footage showing several members of the L.A.P.D viciously beating Rodney King. Their acquittal, and the subsequent riots that tore through Los Angeles as a result, made fodder forin a number of Hollywood movies over the next several years, including Joel Schumacher\u2019s Falling Down, <\/em>an action-oriented spin on the unhinged white racist loner narrative as previously found in disturbing dramas like Joe<\/em> and Taxi Driver<\/em>. Falling Down<\/em> is as complex and disturbing a movie as those, making no bones about its lead character\u2019s virulent racism, but because Schumacher heightens the drama surrounding him, creating a number of legitimately thrilling action set-pieces, many of the film\u2019s most ardent fans and detractors miss the point it\u2019s actually making. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Falling Down<\/em> serves as a perfect example of how much has changed in Hollywood\u2019s willingness to actually address and acknowledge race. One need only compare it to 2019\u2019s Joker<\/em>, a film that explores many of the same ideas and traces almost the same arc, but which completely avoids acknowledging race, to the point where it literally whitewashes history: the inciting incident in Joker<\/em>, in which the titular anti-hero guns down four young men on a subway train, is based on a real incident <\/a>that took place in New York in the \u201880s. But whereas the real case involved a white man targeting and killing young black men, in Joker<\/em>, the victims are changed to smug, white Wall Street bros. Say what you will about how much sympathy Falling Down<\/em> shows for its white avenger, it never lets him off the hook in so egregious a manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Last year\u2019s cruelly entertaining Unhinged<\/em>, which shares more than a little DNA with Falling Down<\/em> and its cinematic forbearers, also avoids any mention of race, although it\u2019s more understandable in its case since it\u2019s a smaller, self-contained horror-thriller.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even more unthinkable these days than a major studio bankrolling Falling Down<\/em> is the idea that they would ever allow something like Die Hard with a Vengeance<\/em> to happen again. While the first two Die Hard<\/em> movies certainly contain their share of ethnic stereotyping, neither of them actively engaged with racial politics. But the third one\u2014based on an original script initially titled Simon Says<\/em>, which was rewritten first as a Lethal Weapon<\/em> sequel before being turned into a Die Hard<\/em> movie\u2014was produced in the aftermath of the L.A. riots, and for whatever reason, the filmmakers thought a heavy focus on racial enmity would be a good fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They weren\u2019t wrong. For all that Die Hard<\/em> also betrays a reactionary political viewpoint, as conveyed by having John McClane charge his new civilian partner Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson) as being racist against whites, the rest of the movie contradicts this point. Zeus is not only shown to be McClane\u2019s equal in brain, brawn and bravery, but his distrust of white people\u2014particularly the police (he explicitly mentions Rodney King)\u2014is shown to be well founded, as he\u2019s constantly being met with racism from white civilians,\u00a0 Eurotrash bad guys, and trigger-happy beat cops. It shouldn\u2019t go unnoticed that at no point does Zeus ever accept McClane\u2019s criticism of himself as a racist, nor does he ever have some big turnaround moment where he questions his own motives. Indeed, 26 years on, nothing about the character\u2019s staunch adherence to black self-determinism reads as controversial or problematic (at least not from a progressivist point of view), while his contempt for the police has been proven entirely justified (even more so than it was at the time).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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